ARMENIA SHOULD ADOPT AGGRESSIVE STRATEGY OF IT ENTERPRISES’ ENTRANCE INTO ARAB AND SOUTH ASIAN COUNTRIES

Noyan Tapan

Dec 5, 2008

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 5, NOYAN TAPAN. The closure of Lycos Armenia – the
Armenian subsidiary of Lycos Europe company, and the dismissal of
75 experts of Epygi Labs AM – the subsidiary of Epygi Labs company
(US) are related to business organization rather than to the impact
of the global economic crisis. The Executive Director of the Union
of IT Enterprises of Armenia (UITE) Karen Vardanian expressed this
opinion at the December 4 press conference.

According to him, Lycos Europe was trying to sell the companies
servicing its six portals for a year, but it failed to do so. So the
management of Lycos Europe decided to stop the operation of these
companies with low profitability. In the opinion of K. Vardanian,
Lycos Armenia with its 200 employees and "unique services" will be
purchased by another company within the next few months.

K. Vardanian said that in case of Epygi Labs AM, the uncoordinated
work of the local team developing high-quality production and the
U.S. team selling that production was evident. Nevertheless, in his
words, "it happened during the crisis, so we cannot say that the
crisis did not affect" the behavior of the above mentioned European
and U.S. companies.

K. Vardanian believes that with the aim of neutralizing the impact
of the crisis on Armenian IT sector, the country’s government should
adopt an aggressive strategy of entrance into markets of countries
with an economic growth, taking into account the fact that 60% of
the sector’s production is currently exported to the countries which
are now in economic recession. 20% of IT production is exported to
Russia, 50% – to the U.S, and the rest – to Europe. According to
experts, the recession will continue in the U.S. and Europe for two
years. K. Vardanian expressed an opinion that the sale capacities
should be increased in markets of Arab states, China and other
countries of South-East Asia.